Fourteen
by Venalosia Zea'rel
Summary: [Translation] Cronus, Kankri. Love and hate. A mad man born on Valentine's day. Everything equals fourteen, in the end, after all.
1. One And Four

Hey everybody. I'm Venalosia Zea"Rel (don't try to pronounce that, it's impossible. ) and as I am... Well, quite bored, I thought 'why don't I translate one of my fanfictions in english?' and so...

Here. It's a cronkri thing I wrote exactly one year ago (okay, I wrote it one year and one day ago, now) and it had already been published on my tumblr. So if you're reading it and thinking 'hey, but I already read this before!' (which I highly doubt), it's juste I wanted to send it.  
Well...  
Enjoy your reading? There will be three chapters plus an epilogue. I apologize in advance for any mistake you may find.

* * *

February, Fourteenth.  
One, four, zero, two. It would make seven, if we added up every number. But it's only a date, a page of the calendar, number and month, nothing more. Love's Day, day of disgusting pink hearts sticked on pale green cards, day of stories about "How I met you father" and "How I fucked your mother. It's the day which play spitefully with the feelings, making anger and pain, loneliness, growing in single person's chests.

It's why, at nightfall, the entire world closes its eyes to avoid the disastrous play of people falling along with the night. Like the rain falls, on Valentine's Day, the ones who didn't have girlfriend, boyfriend, lover fall from towers and bridges, jump from their rooves and end up crushed on the floor.  
And the blood around their head is just like a flower. A beautiful, deadly flower that 'He' can never gather.  
Things are always beautiful, when we know we cannot reach them.

Today it's February 14th. fourteen past midnight . 'He' isn't asleep.  
For fifteen years 'he' has been watching the unloved falls,the red and yellows roses growing slowly on the tarmac, every Valentine's Day. The same single night, every year, he watches the world being torn apart by people falling for love.  
'He' is 24, he already wrecked every single chance in his life. Love, family? 'He' doesn't really know anymore what these words mean. But he is sure Love, true love, the one who always win and never end in some sort of tragedy, is.  
'He' also thinks some people don't have the right to fall, they just have to live. Otherwise the story wouldn't be.  
For fifteen years 'he' has been watching, saying 'he' couldn't fall. 'He' almost took this observation like a yearly hobbie. Some people like to watch leaves falling from the tree...  
'He' prefer to see other guys instead of leaves, towers instead of trunks. So he just looks at them taking a swan dive from the edge of their buildings.  
'He' looks at their last fall, sitting on the barrier of his little balcony, 'he' looks at the future stage for the sick comedy the world is going to be for one day. An unhealthy comedy, full of deaths and weird people, but not a tragedy. The world isn't a tragedy.

In his eyes, the only tragedy is the five years he has lived. Five years... Five. One plus four. Fourteen. Again. Always. Five years, or fourteen? His name is Cronus. Cronus Ampora. The only good thing in his name... Is that it would never make fourteen. A bit of a boaster, way too romantic, he hides his thoughts behind a screen of stinky gray smoke and his feelings under an old black leather jacket. Poet and playwright of his life he always said.  
And his tragedy, of course, had a name. A name which didn't make fourteen.

It's still Valentine's Day. Fourteen past five. Just for the night's scent, he closes his eyes. But doesn't sleep. Doesn't fall.

_Manage to staying alive, another day. Waste the entire day watching the hours flow, four, one, two and seven. Manage to staying alive, holding the old balcony under me. Stay alive until midnight, February fifteenth. Live just another day.  
Outdoing myself.  
I_t has been five years. He just wants to add another day to protect his mind. Add another night to stand on the edge of his flat without falling.

Fourteen past begins to rise, as he stands up with it, in order to wash away the scars left by another sleepless night. He leaves the barrier he has been sitting on, walking in his little appartment almost aimlessly. Quite old lilac wallpaper, white tiles. He locked himself in his little, narrow bathroom. Purple, as all the other rooms are here. He loves this stupid color.

His clothes are soon scattered across the room, and he showers under the boiling water jet.  
He counts the drops on his tanned skin, two, twelve and then fourteen. He counts the scars on his chest, ten and fourteen.  
He counts. He counts the time he spends soaping, the time he spends rincing.  
Ten and then fourty.  
He looks at his watch as he dresses himself with clean clothes, blue jean and white tee-shirt as always. And the drops falling from his wet hair are the tears he didn't let fall for five years.  
Five. One and four. Fourteen.  
Five equal fourteen.

He just walks in his cold appartment, eyes wandering around without any aim. Fourteen steps, every time. He counts them. Fourteen. Then one step aside, to reach the button of the awering machine and listen the messages left during the night.  
Maybe somebody worried for him?

_**You've got fourteen new messages.**_

_Laugh. Sit on a chair -fourteen steps away, always fourteen - and play with hair while messages flows. Principally people who don't care about me. Friends. Family. Even some guys I barely know, and all of them wishing the same stupid thing.  
Every year it's the same boring old story._

"Happy Birthday."  
"Happy Birthday."  
"Happy Birthday, Brother. I can't be here for it, so... I just wish it here. "  
"Are you doing something on Valentine's day, Crony-sugar?" _Ok, this one was... Quite stupid._

"Happy Birthday, Cronus! "  
"You forgot your keys in my car, Cro. I'll come tonight to give them back to you."  
"Happy birthday."  
"Happy birthdaaaay."  
"Beh...Bi Day ! " _Who let a baby wishing me my birthday?_

"Hey Cro, do you, by any chance, have my dvd? "  
"Joyeux anniversaire." _Yeeees, now, french. Wonderful. I had one or two french girlfriends...  
_"Platypus."

"Happy birthday."  
"Cronus?"

_This feeling of falling. How hurtful it is... A tragedy rewritten and then forgotten in a second. Flashback of five years.  
Fourteen. Fourteenth message. And here I am, forcefully listening, heart beating in my chest.  
A voice I didn't hope to hear again._

"It's Kankri. Can... Could you, please, call back? It's important. You still have the number, I'm sure...  
And Happy Birthday;"


	2. Fourteen Seconds

And here comes the second chapter.  
The more I write and translate, the more I realise I'm just a weird psychopath who likes to make Cronus suffer.  
I love him so much.  
Thank you for following, reviewing and favoriting! 

* * *

Fourteen past nine.  
Nine, one, four. Nine plus five equal fourteen. Everything seems to become fourteen, in the end, when the sunlight enters the room and lightens up a bit the almost empty room. Empty of real memories, of the sound of old vanished laughs. Empty of a scent of humanity, scent of life.  
Cronus doesn't really live, without the voice he heard. Coming right from the answering machine, it shot him through the heart without any hesitation. And yet he is still there, sitting on the same old chair, the fourteenth message repeating again and again, like a old song. The metallic voice, altered by the shitty speakers, overcome his brain, his mind.  
And his eyes widens, he grits his teeth in order to avoid tears' fall. He hasn't cried for five years, fourteen years. No.  
He won't cry.

Kankri...  
Kankri, the name of his tragedy. Five acts, five years. Maybe fourteen. He was nineteen, he wasn't yet. February-July. Five months between their two birthdays, actually. It was his tragedy. His way to survive. They were lovers, yes. For a night.  
For a life. Fourteen years - still fourteen-. Amazing, almost weird, how this number is important in some lives.

And the message, again and again, the voice never stop talking, to bring back Cronus to Kankri, to remember him all the things he loved, all the things they went through. His annoyed and annoying tone, the words, HIS words. And he imagines, at the end of the line, him.

One ringtone, two. Ten. He hangs up. Call back. Two more ringtone, before he hears the answering machine. His left fingers tugs with the bottom of his red jumper, waiting to leave his message. He imagines his lips almost against the phone, the words, the hesitation, his shattered breath when he hangs up another time.  
Cronus knows him by heart.  
It always was his mistake.

The moron always on his chair takes from his pocket his cellphone. Slides a finger on the screen, to unlock it. His wallpaper is just some photo taken with his best friend, one rainy day. Nevermind. He quickly taps the five on his keypad, letting his finger on for fourteen seconds.  
One ringtone.  
Two.  
Another one, and then again one.  
The last.  
"Hello?"

_This time when you cannot breathe, when your heart is beating so fast that you think it's gonna break your lungs and chest. This time when somebody answers your call, this voice you've never forgotten. How dumb we can be, when five years pass in denial.  
How dumb we are, trying to change a tragedy with some weird jokes._

"Kankri? It's Cronus."

Silence. One of the silence everyone fears, during a phone call. Deep, full of remorses and hate. Full of tears and screams. Full of love?  
But this one sounds like a smile. Not from him, obviously, from Kankri. A smile stabbing his heart in fourteen seconds.  
"I've figured this out, Cronus. How are you?  
— As good as someby who got a call from his ex after fourteen years.  
— It's only been five years.  
— It's fourteen. What do you want?"

The silence, again. Deeper, this time. Gluing the time and his breath, the all room. Like amber. Gluing time and breath, gluing hope, and closing the lavender eyes of the young man, still on his little metallic sound, at the end of the line, looks for his words. It's not how he is, naturally, he doesn't need to look for words, Cronus remembers and let a tear falls. What has the world done to his little love?  
What has the world done to him?  
What has love done to them...?

"Knowing how you are, what you're doing. Maybe one day, planning on seeing you again.  
— After fourteen years? And the girl you left me for?"  
Just a sigh.

"It's stupid, Cronus, if you allow me to use this word. I don't need her approval to talk to you. But I don't want to seem rude and just come to your house, like if nothing happened. But...  
— But?"

He hears it. The hesitation in the voice. The almost cracking tone, the tears falling on the red carpet- Kankri loves to blind other people with this color-. He hears it and sighs.  
"But...  
— I understand. Come here, Kankri. "

If he must be broken, Cronus prefers to be by his ex lover more than any other people. Even if it means seeing him happy and all the things going with it, perfectly fine with his girlfriend.  
Even if it means crying in the bathroom when he would be gone.  
Forever this time.

_And I stay, like an idiot, with the phone against my ear even if he hanged up. And I smile, and I cry. The tears roll down my cheeks, one each second. Just because he still remember me. I am overreacting. Just because there were the words we used to use to see each other. Fourteen seconds before I realize. Turning off my phone. Five minuts and fourteen seconds._

For the first time in, what, two hours? He stands up and walks around his appartment, tries to comb his hair before he left his phone on a table. It's been five years since he had seen him for the last time. Fourteen years he had been waiting to apologize.  
Apologize for loving him. Loving him so hard that one night he left him without a note or an adress.  
Apologize for being Cronus Ampora.

The young man, leather jacket on his shoulder, quickly goes to buy some cigarettes, chewing-gums and maybe condoms. Out of stock.  
"It's Valentine's day!"  
He has almost forgotten it.

Fourteen past ten. Here he is.  
His own door seems unfamiliar to him, his reflection is the reflection of a stranger. He anxiously plays with his fingers, on the wooden table. Waiting for a call, for a knock on the door.  
The second option. And the sound against his heavy door makes him jump. He opens it.  
And memories jump right in his face. Right in his heart.  
A tear on a frozen cheek, falling to break everything.  
In fourteen seconds.


End file.
